The God-Possessed Swordsmanship Genius - Chapter 50

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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The Sword Genius Blessed by a God, Chapter 50

The voice had suddenly gone calm.
The demonic energy that had been surging from Kaglos’s sword spirit subsided along with it.

-So I’ve just been wasting my anger on some little brat from Visken who knows nothing?

“I don’t know, and could you lower your voice? It’s echoing way too loudly in my head.”

Allen tapped his temple with two fingers.
Kaglos’s voice seemed similar to a mental transmission, yet it rang through his mind far louder than one.
Loud enough that he doubted he could keep a conversation going like this for long.

-Is the echoing in your head the problem?

Swoosh.

Just then, something red and spirit-like slipped out from the hilt of the Demon Sword.
A small soul about the size of a fist.
Soon, two little horns and round, button-like eyes sprouted from the soul.
The soul bobbing before him bore no resemblance at all to the image of Kaglos Allen had imagined.

“Then how about this, Visken?”
“…Are you really that same guy from back then?”

It was a relief that the voice no longer rattled inside his head, but the creature’s appearance was hard to take seriously.
A round, dim-witted face.
It was nothing like the terrifying demon who had fought the First Patriarch.

‘I feel like I’ve been conned.’

Maybe he’d really just been some ordinary demon underling, Allen thought.

“I can see exactly what you’re thinking, Visken!”
“Now it’s my ears that are ringing instead of my head. Could you speak quietly? I can hear everything.”

Allen dug a finger into his ear, walked over to the bed, and sat down on its edge.
The soul of Kaglos, which had been floating lazily before him, folded its arms with an arm that popped out from somewhere and asked.

“Why did you ask for me?”

It seemed he had overheard Allen demanding him from Axion.
Even without being drawn from its scabbard, Kaglos had been watching and listening to everything happening outside.

“I have some questions, and it’d be a shame to just throw you away.”
“What?”
“To put it simply, I need your power.”

Allen recalled the moment he had first drawn Kaglos.
His stats had shot up in an instant.
Thanks to that, Allen had briefly possessed power that overwhelmed a demon-possessed human. He had unleashed strength beyond his realm with nothing but a single sword.
The power had faded quickly, but the memory of it still burned vividly.

‘Considering Belbemos obtained a Demon Sword and rose all the way to Third Demon, the power Kaglos holds must be far more than that.’

The power of the Demon Sword he had experienced was probably only a fraction of its true strength.
Now that the Question Mark’s existence had erased the Demon Sword’s penalties, Kaglos was nothing short of a cheat-level item to Allen.
But.

“You want me to help Visken?”

At Allen’s demand, Kaglos’s spirit trembled.

“A brat who knows nothing, and yet so shameless.”
“Good to hear you say that. I was wondering about it anyway.”

There was plenty Allen wanted to ask Kaglos regardless.

“What exactly are you? How were you sealed inside this sword? Why did you fight the First Head of the House, and why are the Seongsin-ryu oral formulas stored within the blade?”
“Quite the variety of questions.”
“Too many, was it? Then let’s start with this one. What was your relationship with the First Head of the House?”

Arms folded, Kaglos’s spirit turned to gaze out the window.
For some reason, a wistfulness seeped from the spirit.

“A friend. And an enemy.”
“A friend? An enemy?”

Two relationships that could not be more contradictory.
Allen took the words to mean they had once been friends, only to become enemies later.
But he couldn’t make sense of it.

‘A human and a demon as friends?’

That they had become enemies, he could understand.
After all, humans and demons were like oil and water, or the sun and the moon, beings that could never mix or stand side by side.
In the world Allen had come from, countless people had lost their lives to demons and demon-possessed humans, and countless more had lost their families and wept in grief.
But friends?

“By friend, do you mean a contractor?”

Allen asked, wondering whether his own ancestor had been a demon-possessed human. Kaglos let out a snort.

“I don’t know how you know about contracts between demons and humans, but we never made any such thing.”
“So you were truly friends?”
“Yes.”

Allen breathed a silent sigh of relief at that.
He had wondered whether the First Head might have been a demon-possessed human, but it didn’t seem so.

“In that battle you saw, I was defeated by Hecate. Yet for some reason, that brat didn’t kill me.”

As if recalling that moment, Kaglos’s spirit flared like a blazing flame.

“Hecate offered me a deal. In exchange for sparing my life, I was to aid him for ten years. He said there was something he absolutely had to do.”

Ten years.
To a human, it was a long time, but to a demon who lived over a thousand years, it was hardly long at all.
For a high-ranking demon like Kaglos, it was even less.

“Back then, I was interested in the human named Hecate. I wanted to know what he meant to accomplish and what kind of being he would become. From that day on, I began traveling with him.”
“Not because you wanted to survive?”
“Do you think this body would fear something as trivial as death?”

Growling low for a moment, Kaglos resumed his story.

“As time passed, Hecate gathered more companions. People multiplied, and land took shape. Those who followed him grew in number, and that is how a family was formed.”
“So that’s the Visken of today?”
“It is.”

It had been a glorious past.
If Kaglos was to be believed, he was the one who had founded Visken alongside the first head of the family, Hecate.
Yet as far as Allen knew, no record of Kaglos existed in Visken’s archives.
He was known only as a dangerous Demon Sword.

“I get what you mean by ‘friend.'”

Allen, who had been nodding, frowned and asked.

“But how did it all go so wrong?”
“I don’t know either.”
“You don’t know?”
“That’s right. We met as enemies at first, but we became friends. Real friends. Comrades in arms. And then…”

Whoooosh.

A bone-chilling cold seeped out from Kaglos’s spirit.

“That bastard sealed me away without warning.”

The chill rising from his spirit was the resentment of a being who had been locked inside the sword for fifteen hundred years.

“Why?”
“Why? Why, you ask?”

Kaglos’s spirit trembled.
Rage.
And, at the same time, a sorrow that could be felt.
It was the moment Allen had sensed Kaglos’s emotions finally take shape.

“I’m the one who wants to know. All this time I’ve been trapped in this damned sword, I’ve wondered. Why did he betray me? Why? Why!”

Kaglos’s last words sounded less like a question and more like a mutter to himself.

“Did he plan to use me from the start? Or did I become a stumbling block to the Visken family? Go on, Visken, answer me. If that bastard’s blood runs through your veins too!”

Wild fury and grief came through the blade. Mixed into his howl was a bitterness that he alone had considered Hecate a friend.

At Kaglos’s cry, Allen closed his eyes for a moment and thought.
The first head of the family, Hecate Visken.
Why had he sealed Kaglos inside this sword?
Had he truly only used him as a demon for his own purposes? Or, as Kaglos suspected, had the demon’s existence become a stumbling block to the family he had founded?

It had happened fifteen hundred years ago.
There was no way to uncover the truth of that distant past right now.
If I become head of the Visken family someday, will I be able to learn about it then?

Either way, it was a truly peculiar relationship.
A demon who had become friends with the first head of the family. And the first head, who had somehow sealed that same demon away.
Their bond had crossed fifteen hundred years and returned now to Visken, right here.
Right in the palm of his own hand.

Allen opened his eyes again.
While he had closed them and recalled the past of fifteen hundred years ago, Allen had been weighing one thing.
And the words he finally brought out at the end of that deliberation.

“Then let’s do this with me too.”

After a brief pause, Allen added.

“Friend.”
“…What?”

Kaglos tilted his head, looking utterly baffled.
It was the reaction of someone who suspected he’d heard something wrong.

“Well, we won’t be real friends right away. I’m not expecting that much. I just mean we take our time and get to know each other.”
“You… what part of what I said led you to that conclusion?”
“Didn’t the First Head of the Family start out as your enemy too?”

Allen shot up from the bed and met Kaglos’s spirit at eye level.

“At the very least, I’m not your enemy right now, right? That makes it all the more possible.”
“Hah… you say that so easily.”

At that, Allen burst into a loud laugh.
Easy?
Far from it.

Becoming friends with a demon was anything but easy for Allen.
Kaglos would never understand that, most likely.
Just as he despised humans and the Visken, Allen harbored a deep hatred for demons.

“Don’t try any tricks. You only want my power. I don’t trust the Visken.”
“Living long enough to hear a demon say he doesn’t trust someone… what a thing to see.”
“And how long have you lived, that you dare spout such nonsense in front of me?”
“Fair point.”

Allen conceded without a fight.
No matter how much longer he had lived than he looked, this wasn’t something to say in front of Kaglos, who had surely lived at least fifteen hundred years.

“You’re right, you’re right. I need your cooperation. Befriending you is partly so I can get it.”
“Ha! I knew it, you little Visken brat.”
“So why would I suddenly want to be friends with you, what’s so charming about you?”

Allen said exactly what he thought.
He sensed that with this one, scarred by betrayal, a lie would never work.

“Let’s look at it positively. You don’t lose anything, do you? If things stay this way, you’ll either be sealed back in that cold sheath, or melted down in a blazing furnace. Wouldn’t it be better to…”

Allen hoisted the Demon Sword high and continued.

“Wouldn’t it be better to see the world again, with me?”
“…What?”
“Along the way, we might find your body. And who knows? If I become the Family Head, I might learn why the First Head sealed you away.”

At that last line, Allen felt Kaglos’s spirit tremble.
Allen could tell.
That he was still curious about what had happened between him and the First Head.
His time had stopped fifteen hundred years ago. To set that time moving again, Kaglos would surely want to uncover the secret between himself and the First Head.

“I… will never trust a human again.”

Kaglos’s distrust of the Visken and of humans ran deeper than Allen had imagined.
He hadn’t expected this.
That the Demon Sword would distrust humans, of all things.

“Good.”

Realizing the tables had turned, Allen grinned and said.

“Same here, as it happens.”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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